We have heard that AMD brought back the A6-3500 on current roadmaps and that there will be a triple-core Llano after all.

The current roadmap shows the A6-3500. This either means that AMD decided there is a market for such APU, since it will fill the gap between the quad-core A6-3600 and the dual-core A4-3400 APU, or that the company planned the triple-core from the begining. As we wrote back then, some sources close to the company were claiming that they never saw the A6-3500 and that there is no plan to bring it to the market.

In case you missed this one, the A6-3500 is identical to the A6-3600 as it has the same GPU part, same clocks but lacks one core. It ticks at 2.1GHz (2.4GHz with Turbo Boost) has 3MB of cache, features Radeon HD 6530D GPU part with 320 stream processors and is clocked at 443MHz. It supports DDR3-1866 memory, has a 65W TDP and supports AMD's Dual Graphics and Turbo Core.

Back in July, we were surprised to hear that AMD had no plans regarding the triple-core Llano. We thought it was strange as AMD usually goes for as much chips as it can and faulty quad-core products simply become a triple-core ones. We have certainly heard about this one, saw it in some roadmaps and even seen some early samples of it.

For now, it looks like that A6-3500 will be arriving to markets sometimes during this month together with the rest of the lineup including Turbo Core enabled A8-3800, A6-3600 and the dual-core lineup. AMD was expecting the rest of the lineup to ramp up by the end of July but we are yet to see them on e-tail/retail shelves.

Our sources close to AMD are claiming that there won't be a triple-core A6-3500 SKU after all. We saw it already and heard about it from a couple of reports and roadmaps, but currently our sources are telling us that there is no plan for triple-core SKUs and there never was.

As you already know, the A6-3500 is pretty much identical to the quad-core A6-3600 as it has the same GPU part, same clocks but with one core less. Currently sources close to AMD are claiming that AMD never planned such a SKU for desktop Llano lineup, but we guess that there had to be some talks about it as our sources usually forward info that they hear directly from AMD. In past, AMD always pushed faulty quads to triple-cores but it looks like that this time this won't happen, at least not with desktop Llano.

We have also seen some early samples of the mentioned triple-core A6-3500 and there has been some testing of it as well. Unfortunately, it looks like AMD wants to push quad-cores and if you are aiming for cheaper then you'll have to settle for dual-core parts.

On the other hand, we are still waiting for the rest of the desktop Llano lineup to show up in retail/e-tail, and we were told that things should ramp up in July, or at least these few days that are left of July.

The guys from Donanimhaber managed to pull some performance figures from AMD's upcoming triple-core Llano APU that will be sold under A6-3500 name. This triple core managed 5173 marks in 3DMark06 as well as some decent figures in AIDA64 bench.

In case you missed it, the A6-3500 is quite similar to the quad-core A6-3600 except for the fact that it has one less core. It works at 2.1GHz with a 2.4GHz on Turbo, has 3MB of L2 cache and comes with Radeon HD 6530D graphics with 320 stream processors and a 433MHz GPU clock. It has support for 1866MHz DDR3 memory and a TDP of 65W.

Unfortunately, Donanimhaber didn't put the A6-3500 against any other APU, so we can only guess the performance difference but it would be quite interesting to see it in action against the A6-3650 quad-core part.

There has been some rumours that the fourth core on A6-3500 could be unlocked but we still have to see them in retail/e-tail and these rumours still have to be confirmed. The price is also unknown and the relase date is still scheduled for sometime in Q3, together with the rest of the A6-series lineup.